Author: Doula

I have not added any blog posts for a while. Why? I have been focusing on my Instagram (www.instagram.com/sevenravensdoula), and by extension Facebook (www.facebook.com/sevenravensdoula), these last few months; and that’s where I’ve shared my thoughts and ideas on all things end-of-life. So, unless I’ll feel inspired to share a longer…

* Trigger warning: This post discusses human decomposition – in very mild and general terms. Please decide whether that’s something you’d like to read about. * The other day I was invited to visit a mortuary in one of Melbourne’s bayside suburbs. The mortician-embalmer had generously offered to discuss her…

“My gumboots are gone!” “Bunny is gone!” “My phone is gone!” These are some of the panicked statements I hear at home almost every day. “Well, if it’s not here, it will be elsewhere. Let’s have a look together”, I say. And of course that’s true. When something is “gone”,…

On a long plane-journey recently, I watched the David Bowie documentary “Moonage Daydream”. Unlike for many other people, Bowie’s music and iconography had never played a large role in my life, despite the fact that he’d spent a few years in my chosen hometown of Berlin, and his footprints still…

This week, a remarkable person died: Käthe, our family’s old neighbour in Marburg, Germany. She was 102 years old. Käthe was generous in her appraisal of others, always seeing the best in people, or, where that was not always possible, she sought to understand the reasons behind others’ failings, and…

If you had only a limited time left to live, would you change aspects of your life or keep everything as it is? Are you regularly experiencing moments of joy and satisfaction, or have you been “doing the hard yards” for quite a while now, in the hope that something…